Even before the deportations had begun, toward the latter part of 1914, the Turkish government cunningly attempted to disarm the Zeitunians, the brave Armenian mountaineers of Cilicia, who had taken up arms against the Turkish government at three different times in the nineteenth century, and each time had laid down their arms only on the intervention of the European powers, believing that they would put an end to the Turkish barbarities. This time the government filled the prisons with the prominent Zeitunians and persuaded the young warriors to surrender, promising to set them free if they did so. After accomplishing its deceitful plan, the government put to death most of the young men, deported the inhabitants, and made the mouhajirs from Balkans inhabit Zeitun, even changing the name of the place to Soulaymania, in order to erase the memory of those brave mountaineers. A group of warriors, however, found means to take up their arms, climb the mountains, and fight the Turkish soldiers. They are still free, and live among the mountains of Giaur Dagh. In the following year the inhabitants of Suediah were the first to defend themselves against the Turks. In April, when the Turkish government ordered the Armenian peasants of Suediah to leave their homes and emigrate toward Der-El-Zor, the inhabitants of four or five villages, nearly 5,000 in number, refused to obey this unlawful order of the Turkish government. With their families they climbed the Amanos mountains and for forty-two days heroically resisted the cannonading of the regular Turkish forces. Their situation was of course critical. The desperate villagers sewed a large red cross on a white sheet to inform the fleet of the Allies in the Mediterranean that they were in danger. The French cruiser, Guechène, got in touch with the Armenian peasants, informed its war department of the situation, and obtained permission to remove them by transports to Port Said (Egypt). Most of them are still there, cared for by the British, while the young warriors went to join the French Oriental Legion, and fought on the Palestine front under General Allenby. [Illustration: Turkish cannons captured by the Armenians of Van in April, 1915.]